Aiming to improve the municipal performance and to present the “Transparometri” for the municipality of Malisheva, Kosovo Democratic Institute (KDI) organized a roundtable discussion.

The purpose of this meeting was the introduction of “Transparometri”, intending to contribute towards the improvement of the indicators relevant to the 4 pillars of evaluation together with 44 indicators that are used to measure the transparency of the municipal assemblies during January -June 2015.

The Vice-Mayor of Malisheva Mr. Rexhep Mazreku considered the assessment of transparency during January-June period as very objective and he also stated, “We will make an effort to improve and enhance the level of transparency and to eliminate all the negative indicators which emerged in this period.”

The Chairman of the Assembly of Malisheva z.Aziz Thaci stated that “This dialogue will be very helpful and will guide us to reflect more successes than shortcomings regarding the municipal transparency. We shall not feel satisfied with the results of KDI’s assessment but in the contrary we shall improve ourselves toward being more transparent and accountable to the citizens”.

Ahmet Rramanaj member of the Municipal Assembly from the opposition party (PDK) has highlighted the low level of transparency in municipality of Malisheva by claiming that this level should be increased and improved. He also added that the municipal assembly should have a special fund for information by emphasizing the inactivity of the Information Office and its lack of coordination with the assembly and the municipal government.
Avdi Morina (Nisma) member of the Municipal Assembly from the party in position expressed an appreciation towards the commitment of the civil society organizations on improving the transparency of the local government. According to him “the lack of coordination between the sectors results in the absence of the publication of various reports on the website of the municipality.”
Valon Hoti (LVV) member of Municipal Assembly has considered the “Transparometri” report as a very necessary observation since it reflects the perspective of the third party regarding the municipal transparency, which for sure is very objective.” He continued by saying that “the relationship between the municipal executive, the Assembly and the information office should be improved. They should have more information with respect to the attitudes of the opposition parties towards certain decisions. The local government should be more transparent not only to the people but also the members of the assembly, because there are cases when I could not access a public document which is a very sensitive issue.”
Rahim Morina (LDK) member of the Municipal Assembly stated, “We should work more in this direction, considering that the level of transparency is a mechanism that shows the development of democracy at the local level. So a greater transparency means a smaller chance to abuse the public budget “.
Therefore, during the January-June 2015 period the municipality of Malisheva has resulted with a low level of municipal transparency, attaining only 42.1 % of the overall estimation based on the four pillars of evaluation: Office of the Mayor, the Municipal Assembly, Municipal Finance and Transparency in Consultation with Public (each of the four pillars contains 11 indicators).

 

This activity is initiated within the project “Citizens involvement for transparency and accountability” supported by the Olof Palme Centre (OPIC). The participants in the meeting were: The Chairman of the Parliament, the Vice Mayor, the members of the Municipal Assembly of Malisheva, the representatives of the municipal executive, the civil society organizations and the media.